India says yes to Net Neutrality! Approves New Telecom Policy

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had recommended restrictions on service providers from entering into agreements, which lead to discriminatory treatment of content on the Internet.

New Delhi: The Telecom Commission on Wednesday approved net neutrality rules that bar service providers from discriminating against internet content and services by blocking, throttling or granting them higher speed access.
Some mission critical applications or services such as remote surgery and autonomous cars, however, will be kept out of the purview of net neutrality framework.

“The Telecom Commission (TC) today approved net neutrality as recommended by TRAI but some critical services will be kept out of its purview,” telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan said.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had recommended restrictions on service providers from entering into agreements, which lead to discriminatory treatment of content on the Internet.TC also approved the new telecom policy— National Digital Communications Policy, 2018 — for seeking approval of the Union Cabinet, Sundararajan said.

“Everybody in the meeting said the digital infrastructure is even more important than physical infrastructure for India… CEO of Niti Ayog (Amitabh Kant) said that for…districts, we must ensure digital infrastructure is provided at the earliest. Therefore, India must have ease of doing business and enabling policy environment,” she said.

An official who was part of the meeting said the TC has approved installation of around 12.5 lakh WiFi hotspots in all gram panchayats with viability gap funding of around Rs. 6,000 crore by December 2018.